Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

you?"
    "Um, I was looking for Segal?"
    "Jake? He just got off watch. Left a minute ago."
    "Okay. Thanks."
    Daniel backed out into the passageway and put his back to the bulkhead while he thought. If Jacob had been heading for the mess deck he would have passed Daniel. No other route there. So he'd gone elsewhere.
    Daniel knew he should just go eat his own chow. Searching the ship for Jacob tipped way over the line. But Jacob had been even more silent and uncommunicative than usual yesterday. Something was up and the idiot would just let it stew if Daniel left him alone. That much was painfully clear. Personal details had to be dredged out of Jacob bit by bit. Or sometimes Daniel could sneak a roundabout question into the conversation, when they were talking about the ship or Boot Camp or baseball.
    If Jacob hadn't headed right, he had to have gone left. Daniel wandered off that way. As the minutes went by, the passageways cleared out. The first dog watch was underway, and the men who'd been relieved were settled in, eating, working or sleeping. Daniel turned a corner and stopped. This was stupid. Jacob could be anywhere. Probably he'd just gone to the head. Daniel had checked the nearest one, but there were others. There was no way Daniel would find him on a ship this size. He should just go get his own chow.
    He turned another corner randomly and paused. A figure crossed his field of view up ahead, hurrying for the ladder. He knew that back by now. Had even sketched it a time or two. And maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but he turned and followed.
    Jacob climbed the ladders with dogged speed. Daniel wondered if he was still on duty, but surely the doc would have said so. Above Daniel, Jacob stepped out the hatch and onto the open deck. Daniel hesitated and then followed him up and out. Apparently Trip wasn't hurrying to some duty post after all because there he was, leaning on the port-side rail, staring out at the water. Daniel came up behind him slowly and then moved alongside, leaning his own elbows on the rail.
    Jacob glanced over at him. There wasn't enough spray coming over the rail to explain his wet face.
    Daniel said softly, "I can go."
    Jacob just stared at him. Those brown eyes that had caught Daniel the very first day were wide and dark with hurt. After a second Jacob turned back to gaze out over the blue waters. Daniel heard him catch a ragged breath.
    "Want to tell me?"
    "I'm just being stupid. Homesick."
    "You, my friend, are never stupid. And we all get homesick sometimes. Nothing to be ashamed of."
    "I'm not ashamed. Not exactly. I just didn't want anyone to know."
    "Am I just anyone?" Daniel didn't know he was going to say that until the words were out of his mouth. He thought his heart almost stopped waiting for the answer.
    "No. You're Daniel."
    The way Jacob said his name was some kind of answer. Daniel leaned lower on the rail, feeling for his next words. "I get homesick sometimes. Little things set me off. Like the time we got sugar cookies with our chow last week. They reminded me of my Mom's, except hers are so much better. I suddenly really, really wanted to be home, with my brothers and sisters squabbling over who got the first one and Mom slapping our hands because they were still hot, and my old dog lurking under the table hoping we'd drop one." He paused and swallowed hard because that was a little too close to the truth. For a moment he wanted nothing more than to go home. Back before the war. Before the shouting and the coldness and not fitting in, to that moment around the kitchen table. But even if he were getting on a train in Frisco right now, he would never have that back. And this was about Jacob, not him.
    It must have been the right thing to say, though, because Jacob took a short breath and said, "It's Lily's sixteenth birthday today."
    "Oh. You want to be there." Daniel kept his eyes carefully fixed on the horizon.
    He heard more than saw the motion as Jacob rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. "Yeah. I'd promised her... Well, before the war we'd always said we would take her out for a grown-up night on the town when she turned sixteen."
    Daniel knew Lily was Jacob's younger sister. He'd heard a little about the society matron who was his mother and the stiff, business-obsessed man who was their father. Neither one seemed a likely candidate to make a pact to take a sixteen-year-old girl out dancing. "We?"
    "Me and Brian."
    "Brian?"
    "My brother."
    Daniel hesitated for a